Blog

 PREFACE: So much has been written by much better people about the fallacy and inaccuracy of the history taught in Pakistan’s curricula that I can hardly add any dimension or wisdom to it. But let’s try and address the subject from a different angle. The fact of the matter is that the history taught in our schools has tended to encourage the most general and terrifying of existing evils, human presumptions and particularly intellectual arrogance, which can be termed as self-righteousness. That wrong history is being taught at all academic levels in Pakistan also means that the first need of the people like me is to unlearn most of what has been taught.

I am sorry to have borrowed Barbara Tuchman’s axiom in a much lesser context. There has been much talk recently about PMLN’s overt or covert electoral accommodation of ASWJ. However, deplorable as it may be, it does not really surprise me as PMLN has manifested an increasingly right wing disposition and Nawaz Sharif, in particular, seems duly beholden to Saudi Arabia since his stay in the oil-rich desert kingdom.

PREFACE

The shadowy terrorist group SSP, even though banned by Musharraf in 2002, remains at the heart of Pakistan’s national security crisis. Over the years, SSP has integrated itself into a central position in a ring of terror on Pakistan’s national territory, which includes SSP, LeJ, TTP, Al Qaeda, Jundullah, Jaish Mohammad and some smaller groups. Pakistan’s missteps have compounded the situation with SSP, TTP, and LeJ and have undermined the physical security of the nation's own citizens. Additionally, the problem has taken on global dimensions in an increasingly inter-linked world haunted by international Islamic terrorism.

NO – TO SHIA HATE MONGERS TOO

Recently a friend sent me a couple of links showing some Shias using hate speech against the first three caliphs of Islam and Hazrat Ayesha. One of the video showed about fifteen to twenty people gathered at some place in the UK and abusing the wife of their Prophet. I was shocked.  Shias must say no to such hatemongers in their midst.  While these guys form a very small minority of Shias, the tall shadow of their actions falls on everyone in that community. In this age of information, their actions are filmed and propagated all over the world, including Pakistan. Denigrating the figures anyone has built one’s life and faith around is downright inhuman. More than anything else these chumps do significant harm to Shias, as because of their mindless acts and speech somebody gets killed in Parachinar or gets blown up in Quetta or is murdered elsewhere. By all ethical and human standards it is not right to speak insulting words — those words without social value, directed to a specific individual, that would provoke a reasonable member of the group about whose religious icon the words are spoken.

PROLOGUE: The so-called liberals are quick to acknowledge that Pakistan is an intolerant society where innocent people are being killed daily. Unfortunately, these liberals fail to acknowledge that it is minorities, Shias in particular, being targeted for their beliefs and differences. Deny it if you must but this, my friends, is genocide. It's not so much a fixation with the term genocide but a fixation with spreading awareness of the intolerance prevalent in Pakistan. The ignorance of the liberals however has been a huge hurdle because of their control of Pak media as they have a fixation on blaming all internal problems on anti-Pakistan foreign establishments (read CIA/RAW/Mossad/Hindu zionists/Jews of the world/Texans etc).

Pakistan is probably the only country I have seen where hate and intolerance can be and are openly professed in public. By condoning hate language in media, school texts and places of worship; we have created an environment where nothing sells like extremism. Mullahism now largely means livelihood and economic considerations prevail in preaching what sells the best. There is an abundance of fanatically theocratic cults which glorify death and killing, expropriating metaphors from the Quran and Islamic history.  Any sensible cries get lost in the cacophony of extremism in Pakistan. Instead the apologists come out in droves against you. It is these apologists who are forcing the nation’s will, making us lose focus. Some even raised stink when Osama Bin Laden was killed. You cannot be selective in your activism. Speak for everyone. What about the closure to Ahmedi victims’ families? Most of the renowned liberal or investigative journalists are waging a war on reason and hope, for their own advantage. Ever since Z A Bhutto’s government bowing -for its own gain- to the extremists, resorted to every crass argument in the book to carry out the murder of reason and sanity in Pakistan by declaring Ahmedis non-Muslims, Pakistan has been sliding down the path of extremism.